THERE ARE A number of old "White Prophecies" that to the betrayal of the Catalyst. White Column says of this event, "By his love is he betrayed, and his love betrayed also. " A lesser known scribe and prophet, Gant the White, goes into more detail. "The heart of the Catalyst is bared to a trusted one. All confidence is given, and all confidence betrayed. The child of the Catalyst is given into his enemies' hands by one whose love and loyalty are above question. " The other prophecies are more oblique, but in each case the inference is that the Catalyst is betrayed by one who has his implicit trust.
Early the next morning, as we ate toasted bits of rabbit meat, Kettricken and I consulted her map again. We scarcely needed it anymore, we both knew it so well. But it was a thing to set between us and point at as we discussed things. Kettricken traced a fading line on the battered scroll. "We shall have to return to the column in the stone circle, and then follow the Skill road for some little way beyond it. Right up to our final destination, I believe."
"I have no great wish to walk upon that road again," I told her honestly. "Even walking beside it strains me. But I suppose there is no help for it."
"None that I can see."
She was too preoccupied to offer much sympathy. I looked at the woman. The once gleaming blond hair was a short scruffy braid. Cold and wind had weathered her face, chapping her lips and etching fine lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, to say nothing of the deeper worry lines in her brow and between her eyes. Her clothing was travel-stained and worn. The Queen of the Six Duchies could not even have passed muster as a chambermaid in Tradeford. I suddenly wanted to reach out to her. I could think of no way to do so. So I simply said, "We will get there, and we will find Verity."
She lifted her eyes to meet mine. She tried to put faith into her gaze and voice as she said, "Yes, we will." I heard only courage.
We had torn down and moved our camp so often, it no longer took any thought. We moved as a unit, almost as a single creature. Like a coterie, I thought to myself.
Like a pack, Nighteyes corrected me. He came to push his head against my hand. I paused and scratched his ears and throat thoroughly. He closed his eyes and laid back his ears in pleasure. If your mate makes you send me away, I shall miss this greatly.
I won't let that happen.
You believe she will make you choose.
I refuse to think about it just now.
Ah! He fell over on his side, then rolled to his back so I could scratch his belly. He bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. You live in the now and refuse to think of what may come. But I, I find I can think of little else save what may come to be. These times have been good for me, my brother. Living with others, hunting together, sharing meat. But the howling bitch had it aright last night. Cubs are needed to make a pack. And your cub …
I cannot think of that just now. I must think only of what I must do today to survive, and all I must do before I can hope to go home.
"Fitz? Are you all right?"
It was Starling; coming to take me by the elbow and give me a small shake. I looked at her, wakened from my bemusement. The howling bitch. I tried not to grin. "I'm fine. I was with Nighteyes. "
"Oh." She glanced down at the wolf, and I saw her struggle again to grasp just what we shared. Then she shrugged it off. "Ready to leave?"
"If everyone else is."
"They seem to be."
She went to help Kettricken load the final jeppa. I glanced about for the Fool, and saw him sitting silently on top of his pack. His hand rested lightly upon one of the stone dragons and he had a faraway look on his face. I walked up softly behind him. "Are you all right?" I asked quietly.
He did not jump. He never startled. He just turned his pale gaze up to meet mine. The look of his face was a lost yearning with none of his usual sharp wit to it. "Fitz. Have you ever felt you recalled something, but when you groped after it, there was nothing there?"
"Sometimes," I said. "I think it happens to everyone."
"No. This is different," he insisted quietly. "Since I stood on that stone the day before yesterday, and suddenly glimpsed the old world that was here … I keep having odd half-memories. Like him." He stroked the dragon's head gently, a lover's caress to the wedge-shaped reptilian head. "I can almost remember knowing him." He suddenly fixed me with a pleading look. "What did you see, back then?"
I gave a small shrug. "It was like a market plaza, with shops around it, and folk plying their trades. A busy day."
"Did you see me?" he asked very quietly.
"I'm not sure." I suddenly felt very uneasy, speaking about it. "Where you were, there was someone else. She was like you, in a way. No color to her, and behaving, I think, as a jester. You spoke of her crown, carved like rooster heads and tails."
"Did I? Fitz, I can recall little of what I said immediately afterward. I only recall the feeling, and how swiftly it faded. Briefly, I was connected to everything. Part of it all. It was wonderful, like feeling a surge of love or glimpsing something perfectly beautiful or …" He struggled for words.
"The Skill is like that," I told him softly. "What you felt is the pull of it. It is what a Skill user must constantly resist, lest he be swept away on it."
"So that was Skilling," he observed to himself.
"When you first came out of it, you were ecstatic. You said something about somebody's dragon that you were to introduce. It made small sense. Let me think. Realder's dragon. And he had promised to fly you."
"Ah. My dream last night. Realder. That was your name." He caressed the statue's head as he spoke. When he did so, the oddest thing happened. My Wit-sense of the statue surged and Nighteyes came springing to my side, every hackle on his back standing erect. I know the hair on the back of my neck stood up as well, and I recoiled, expecting the statue to suddenly stir to life. The Fool shot us a puzzled glance. "What is it?"
"The statues seem alive to us. To both Nighteyes and me. And when you spoke that name, it almost seemed to stir."
"Realder," the Fool repeated experimentally. I caught my breath as he said it, but felt no response. He glanced at me and I shook my head. "Just stone, Fitz. Cold and beautiful stone. I think perhaps your nerves are fraying." He took my arm companionably and we walked away from the statues and back to the faded trail. The others were already out of sight, save for Kettle. She stood leaning on her stick and glaring back at us. Instinctively I quickened my pace. When we got to the place where she waited, she took my other arm, and then imperiously waved at the Fool to precede us. We followed him, but at a slower pace. When he was a substantial distance ahead of us, she squeezed my arm in a grip of steel and demanded, "Well?"
For an instant I looked at her blankly. Then, "I haven't worked it out yet," I apologized to her.
"That much is plain," she told me severely. She sucked on her teeth for a moment, frowned at me, nearly spoke, and then shook her head briskly at herself. She did not let go of my arm.
For much of the rest of the day, as I walked, silently by her side, I pondered the game puzzle.
I do not think there is anything quite so tedious as retracing one's steps when one is desperate to get somewhere. Now that we were no longer following an ancient road near invisible in overgrowth, we followed our own trampled way back through the marshy forest and up into the hills, and made better speed leaving than we had in getting there. With the shifting of the seasons, the daylight was lingering longer, and Kettricken pushed our march to the edge of dusk. Thus it was that we found ourselves only one hill away from the plaza of black stone when we made our camp that night. I think it was for my sake that Kettricken chose to camp on the ancient road for another night. I had no desire to sleep any closer to that crossroads than I must.
Shall we hunt? Nighteyes demanded as soon as our shelter was set.
"I'm going hunting," I announced to the others. Kettle glanced up disapprovingly.
"Stay well away from the Skill road," she warned me.
The Fool surprised me by coming to his feet. "I shall go with them. If the wolf doesn't mind."
The Scentless One is welcome.
"You are welcome to go with us. But are you sure you feel that strong?"
"If I get tired, I can come back," the Fool pointed out.
As we strode off into the deepening dusk, Kettricken was poring over her map and Kettle was on watch. "Don't be long, or I shall come and find you," she warned me as I left. "And stay away from the Skill road," she repeated.
Somewhere above the trees, a full moon sailed. Light from her crept and snaked down in silvery spills through the newly leafed branches to illuminate our way. For a time we simply traveled together through the pleasantly open woods. The wolf's senses supplemented mine. The night was alive with the smells of growing things and the calls of tiny frogs and night insects. The night air had a crisper bite to it than the day did. We found a game trail and followed it. The Fool kept pace with us, saying not a word. I breathed in deeply and then sighed it out. Despite everything else, I heard myself say, This is good.
Yes. It is. I shall miss it.
I knew he was thinking of what Starling had said the night before. Let us not think of tomorrows that may never come. Let us just hunt, I suggested, and we did. The Fool and I kept to the trail and the wolf veered off through the woods, to spook game back toward us. We moved with the forest, sliding near noiselessly through the night, every sense alert. I came across a porcupine trundling along through the night, but I did not feel like clubbing it to death, let alone gingerly skinning it before we could eat. I wanted simple meat tonight. With great difficulty, I persuaded Nighteyes to seek other prey with me. If we do not find anything else, we can always come back for it. They are not exactly swift of foot, I pointed out to him.
He agreed grudgingly, and we quartered out again. On an open hillside still warm from the sun, Nighteyes spotted the flick of an ear and the glint of a bright eye. In two bounds he was on top of the rabbit. His spring started another rabbit that fled toward the top of the hill. I gave chase, but the Fool called out he was going back now. Halfway up the hill, I knew I would not catch him. I was tired from the long day of walking and the rabbit was in fear of its life. By the time I reached the top of the hill, it was nowhere in sight. I halted, panting. The night wind moved lightly through the trees. On it I caught a scent, at once strange and oddly familiar. I could not identify it, but all the connotations to it were unpleasant. While I stood, nostrils flared, trying to place it, Nighteyes raced soundlessly up to me. Be small! he ordered me.
I didn't pause to think, but obeyed, crouching where I was and peering about for danger.
No! Be small in your mind.
This time I instantly grasped what he meant, and threw my Skill walls up in a panic. His keener nose had instantly associated the faint scent on the air with the scent of Burl's clothing in his saddlebags. I crouched as small as I could make myself and set and reset my boundaries about my mind, even as I pleaded with reality that it was next to impossible that he be here.
Fear can be a powerful spur to the mind. I suddenly grasped what should always have been obvious. We were not that far from the crossroads plaza and the black guidepost there. The symbols carved on the guidepost columns did not merely indicate where the adjacent roads led; they also indicated where the signposts could transport one. Anywhere there was a column, one could be transported to the next column. From the ancient city to any marked location was no more than a step away. All three of them could be but steps away from me right now.
No. There is only the one, and he is not even close to us. Use your nose, if not your brain, Nighteyes scathingly reassured me. Shall I kill him for you? he offered casually.
Please. But be careful of yourself.
Nighteyes snorted softly in disdain. He is fatter far than that wild pig I killed. He puffs and sweats just to walk down the trail. Lie still, little brother, while I get rid of him. Silent as death, the wolf moved off through the forest.
I crouched an eternity, waiting to hear something, a snarl, a scream, the noises of someone running through the brush. There was nothing. I flared my nostrils but could catch no trace of the elusive scent. Suddenly I could no longer stand to crouch and wait. I surged to my feet and followed the wolf, as silently lethal as he. Before, when we had been hunting, I had not paid much attention to where we had gone. Now I perceived that we had approached closer to the Skill road than I had suspected; that our campsite was not that far from it at all.
Like a strain of distant music, I was suddenly aware of their Skilling. I halted where I stood and stood still. I willed my mind to stillness, and let their Skill brush my senses while I made no response.
I'm close. Burl, breathless with both excitement and fear. I sensed him poised and waiting. I feel him, he draws near. A pause. Oh, I like not this place. I like it not at all.
Be calm. A touch is all it will take. Touch him as I showed you, and his walls will come down. Will spoke, master to apprentice.
And if he has a knife?
He won't have time to use it. Believe me. No man's walls can stand before that touch, I promise you. All you need do is touch him. I will come through you and do the rest.
Why me? Why not you or Carrod?
Would you really rather have Carrod's task? Besides, you are the one who had the Bastard in your power and was stupid enough to try to hold him in a cage. Go and complete the task you should have finished long ago. Or would you care to feel our king's wrath again?
I felt Burl shiver. And I trembled, too, for I felt him. Regal. The thoughts were Will's, but somehow, somewhere, Regal heard them, too. I wondered if Burl knew as plainly as I did that no matter whether he killed the Bastard or not, Regal would enjoy giving him pain again. That the memory of torturing him was so pleasurable a one that Regal could no longer think of him at all without being reminded of how completely it had satiated him. Briefly.
I was glad I was not Burl.
There! That was the Bastard! Find him!
I should have died then, by all rights. Will had found me, had found my careless thought floating in the air. My brief sympathy for Burl was all it had taken. He bayed on my trail like a hound. I have him!
There was a moment of poised tension. My heart hammered against my ribs as I sent the Wit questing out all around me. Nothing bigger than a mouse was close by. I found Nighteyes down the hill from me, moving with swift stealth. Yet Burl had said he drew near to me. Had he found a way to shield himself from my Wit-sense? The thought made my knees weak.
Somewhere far down the hill, I heard the crash of a body through brush and a man's shout. The wolf was on him, I thought.
No, brother, not I.
I could scarcely understand the wolf's thought. I reeled with a Skillimpact, yet could feel no source for it. My senses contradicted each other, as if I plunged into water and felt it as sand. With no clear idea of what I did, I began a shambling run down the hill.
This is not him! Will, in great anger and agitation. What is this? Who is this?
A pause of consternation. It's that freak thing, the Fool! Then vast anger. Where is the Bastard? Burl, you clumsy moron! You have betrayed us all to him.
But it was not I, but Nighteyes who charged down on Burl. Even at my distance, I could hear his snarls. In the dark woods below, a wolf launched himself at Burl, and the Skill-shriek he sent up at the sight of those ravening jaws coming toward his face was such that Will was distracted. In that instant, I slammed up my walls, and raced to join my wolf in the physical attack on Burl.
I was doomed to disappointment. They were much farther away than I had thought them. I never even got a glimpse of Burl, save through the wolf's eyes. Fat and clumsy as the wolf might think Burl, he proved an excellent runner when the wolf was at his heels. Even so, Nighteyes would have pulled him down if he had had any farther to go than he did. At his first spring, Nighteyes got only his cloak as Burl spun. His second attack tore legging and flesh, but Burl fled as if uninjured. Nighteyes saw him reach the edge of the black flagged plaza and race up to the column, one hand outstretched pleadingly. His palm slapped the shining stone, and Burl suddenly vanished into the column. The wolf braced his legs to halt, his feet skittering on the slick stone. He cowered back from the standing stone as if Burl had leaped into a blazing bonfire. He halted a handspan from it, snarling furiously, not only in anger but in savage fear. All this I knew, although I was a hillside away, running and stumbling in the dark.
Suddenly there was a wave of Skill. It made no physical manifestation, yet the impact flung me to the ground and drove the breath out of me. It left me dazed, ears ringing, helplessly open to anyone who might wish to possess me. I lay there, sick and stunned. Perhaps that was what saved me, that at that moment I felt absolutely no trace of Skill within myself.
But I heard the others. There was no sense to their Skilling, only awestruck fear. Then they faded in the distance, as if the Skill river itself washed them away. I almost went reaching after them, in my amazement at what I sensed. They seemed to have been shattered to fragments. Their dwindling bewilderment washed against me. I closed my eyes.
Then I heard Kettle's voice frantically calling my name. Panic stained her voice.
Nighteyes!
I'm already on my way. Catch up! the wolf told me grimly. I did as I was told.
I was scratched and dirty and one trouser leg was torn at the knee when I reached the yurt. Kettle was standing outside it, waiting for me. The fire had been built up as a beacon. At the sight of her the pounding of my heart lessened somewhat. I had half-believed that they were being attacked. "What's wrong?" I demanded as I charged up to her.
"The Fool," she said, and added, "We heard an outcry and raced outside. Then I heard the wolf snarling. We went toward the sound and found the Fool." She shook her head. "I am not sure what has happened to him."
I started to push past her into the tent, but she caught me by the arm. She was surprisingly strong for an old woman. She halted me to face her. "You were attacked?" she demanded.
"In a way." Briefly I told her what had happened. Her eyes widened as I spoke of that Skill-wave.
When I was finished, she nodded to herself, grimly confirming her suspicions. "They reached for you and seized him instead. He has not the faintest idea of how to protect himself. For all I know, they have him still."
"What? How?" I asked numbly.
"Back there at the plaza. You two were Skill-linked, however briefly, by the strength of the stone and the strength of who you are. It leaves a … sort of a path. The more often two are linked, the stronger it becomes. With frequency it becomes a bond, like a coterie bond. Others who are Skilled can see such bonds, if they look for them. Often they are like back doors, unguarded ways into a Skilled one's mind. This time, however, I would say they found the Fool in your stead."
The look on my face made her let go my arm. I pushed my way into the tent. There was a tiny fire burning in the brazier. Kettricken knelt by the Fool, speaking to him low and earnestly. Starling sat unmoving in her bedding, pale and staring at him, while the wolf restlessly prowled the crowded interior of the tent. His hackles still stood high.
I went quickly to kneel by the Fool. At first glimpse of him, I recoiled. I had expected him to lie limply unconscious. Instead he was rigid, his eyes open and his eyeballs twitching about as if he watched some terrible struggle we could not witness. I touched his arm. The rigidity of his muscles and the coolness of his body reminded me of a corpse. "Fool?" I asked him. He gave no sign at all of hearing me. "Fool!" I cried louder, and leaned over him. I shook him, lightly at first and then more violently. It had no effect.
"Touch him and Skill to him," Kettle instructed me gruffly. "But be careful. If they still have him, you put yourself at risk as well."
It shames me to say that I froze for an instant. As much as I loved the Fool, I feared Will still. I reached at last, a second and an eternity later, to put my hand on his brow.
"Don't be afraid," Kettle told me uselessly. And then added that which almost paralyzed me, "If they have him and hold him still, it is only a matter of time before they use the link between you to take you as well. Your only choice is to battle them from his mind. Go on, now."
She set her hand to my shoulder, and for one eerie moment, it was Shrewd's hand on my shoulder, drawing Skill-strength from me. Then she gave me a reassuring little pat. I closed my eyes, felt the Fool's brow under my hand. I dropped my Skill walls.
The Skill river flowed, full to floodtime, and I fell into it. A moment to gain orientation. I knew an instant of terror as I sensed Will and Burl at the very edges of my perception. They were in great agitation about something. I recoiled from them as if I had brushed a hot stove, and narrowed my focus. The Fool, the Fool, only the Fool. I sought for him, I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. He darted and eluded me, like a bright gold carp in a weedy pool, like the motes that dance before one's eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon's reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power in the briefest flashes of insight. In a moment I understood and marveled at all that he was, and in the next I had forgotten that understanding.
Then, with an insight worthy of the stone game, I knew what to do. Rather than attempt to seize him, I surrounded him. I made no effort to invade or capture, but simply to encompass all that I saw of him and hold it separate from harm. It reminded me of when I had first been learning to Skill. Often Verity had done this for me, helping me contain myself when the current of the Skill threatened to spill me wide to the world. I steadied the Fool as he gathered himself back into himself.
I suddenly felt a cool clasping of my wrist. "Stop it," he begged gently. "Please," he added, and it smote me that he thought he needed that word. I withdrew from my seeking and opened my eyes. I blinked a few times, and then was surprised to find myself shivering with the cold sweat that cloaked me. It was impossible for the Fool to look any paler than he always was, but there was a tentative look to his eyes and mouth, as if he were not sure he was awake. My eyes met his, and I felt almost a jolt of awareness of him. A Skill-bond, thin as a thread, but there. Had not my nerves been so raw from reaching after him, I probably would not have felt it at all.
"I did not like that," he said quietly.
"I am sorry," I told him gently. "I thought they had hold of you, so I went seeking you."
He waved a hand feebly. "Oh, not you. I meant the others." He swallowed as if sickened. "They were within me. In my mind, in my memories. Smashing and befouling like evil, lawless children. They …" His eyes went glassy.
"Was it Burl?" I suggested gently.
"Ah. Yes. That is his name, though he scarce remembers it himself these days. Will and Regal have taken him over for their own uses. They came through him into me, thinking they had found you …." His voice dwindled off. "Or so it seems. How could I know such a thing?"
"The Skill brings strange insights. They cannot overcome your mind without showing much of their own," Kettle informed him grudgingly. She took a small pot of steaming water off the brazier. To me she added, "Give me your elfbark."
I immediately reached for my pack to dig it out, but I could not resist asking her chidingly, "I thought you said this herb was not beneficial."
"It isn't," she said tersely. "For Skill users. But for him, it may give him the protection he cannot provide for himself. They will try this again, I do not doubt. If they can invade him, even for a moment, they will use him to find you. It is an old trick."
"One I have never heard of," I pointed out as I handed her my bag of elfbark. She shook some into a cup, and added boiling water. Then she calmly put my bag of herbs into her pack. It was obviously not an oversight, and I dismissed as useless asking for them back.
"How do you know so much about Skill matters?" the Fool asked her pointedly. He was recovering some of his spirit.
"Perhaps I learned by listening instead of asking personal questions all the time," she snapped at him. "Now, you are going to drink this," she added, as if she regarded the topic as settled. If I had not been so anxious, it would have been humorous to see the Fool so deftly quelled.
The Fool took the cup but looked over at me. "What was that, that happened at the last? They held me, and then suddenly, it was all earthquake and flood and fire at once." He knit his brow. "And then I was gone, scattered. I could not find myself. Then you came …"
"Would anyone care to explain to me what has happened this night?" Kettricken asked a bit testily.
I half expected Kettle to answer but she kept silent.
The Fool lowered his mug of tea. "It is a hard thing to explain, my queen. Like two ruffians bursting into your bedchamber, dragging you from your bed and shaking you, all the while calling you by another's name. And when they discovered I was not the Fitz, they were very angry with me. Then came the earthquake and I was dropped. Down several flights of stairs. Metaphorically-speaking, of course."
"They let you go?" I asked delightedly. I instantly turned to Kettle. "They are not as clever as you feared, then!"
Kettle scowled at me. "Nor you as clever as I had hoped," she muttered darkly. "Did they let him go? Or did a Skill-blast shake them loose? And if so, whose power was that?"
"Verity," I said with sudden certainty. Comprehension washed over me. "They attacked Verity tonight as well! And he defeated them!"
"Of what do you speak?" Kettricken demanded in her Queen's voice. "Who attacked my king? What knowledge of these others who attack the Fool does Kettle have?"
"No personal knowledge, my lady, I assure you!" I declared hastily.
"Oh, do shut up!" Kettle snapped at me. "My queen, I have a scholar's knowledge, if you will, of one who has studied but cannot do a thing. Since Prophet and Catalyst were joined for that moment back in the plaza, I feared they might share a bond the Skill users could turn against them. But either the coterie does not know this, or something distracted them tonight. Perhaps the Skill-wave that Fitz spoke of."
"This Skill-wave … you believe it was Verity's doing?" Kettricken's breath was suddenly swift, her color heightened.
"Only from him have I ever felt such strength," I told her.
"Then he lives," she said softly. "He lives."
"Perhaps," said Kettle sourly. "To blast with Skill like that can kill a man. And it may not have been Verity at all. It may have been a failed effort by Will and Regal to get at Fitz."
"No. I told you. It scattered them like chaff in a wind."
"And I told you. They may have destroyed themselves in trying to kill you."
I had thought that Kettricken would chide her, but both she and Starling stared wide-eyed in astonishment on Kettle's sudden professing of Skill knowledge. "How kind of you both to have warned me so well," the Fool said with acid courtesy.
"I didn't know …" I began my protest, but again Kettle overrode me.
"It would have done no good to warn you, save to put your mind to dwelling on it. We can make this comparison. It has taken all our combined effort to keep Fitz both focused and sane on the Skill road. He would never have survived his journey into the city, had not his senses been numbed with elfbark first. Yet these others travel the road and use the Skill beacons freely. Obviously their strength overmatches his by much. Ah, what to do, what to do?"
No one replied to her questioning of herself. She looked up suddenly at the Fool and me accusingly. "This cannot be right. It simply cannot be right. The Prophet and the Catalyst, and you are scarcely more than boys. Green to manhood, untrained in Skill, full of pranks and lovesick woes. These are the ones sent to save the world?"
The Fool and I exchanged glances, and I saw him take a breath to reply to her. But at that moment, Starling snapped her fingers. "And that is what makes the song!" she exclaimed suddenly, her face transfigured with delight. "Not a song of heroic strength and mighty-thewed warriors. No. A song of two, graced only with friendship's strength. Each possessed of a loyalty to a king that would not be denied. And that in the refrain … `Green of manhood,' something, ah …"
The Fool caught my eye, glanced meaningfully down at himself. "Green manhood? I really should have showed her," he said quietly. And despite everything, despite even the glowering of my queen, I burst out laughing.
"Oh, stop it," Kettle rebuked us, with such discouragement in her voice that I was instantly sober. "It is neither the time for songs nor knavery. Are you both too foolish to see the danger you are in? The danger you put all of us in with your vulnerability?" I watched her as she reluctantly took my elfbark out of her pack again and put her kettle back to boil. "It is the only thing I can think of to do," she apologized to Kettricken.
"What is that?" she asked.
"To drug the Fool at least with elfbark. It will deafen him to them, and hide his thoughts from them."
"Elfbark doesn't work like that!" I objected indignantly.
"Doesn't it?" Kettle turned on me fiercely. "Then why was it used traditionally for years for just that purpose? Given to a royal bastard young enough, it could destroy any potential for Skill use. Often enough was that done."
I shook my head defiantly. "I've used it for years, to restore my strength after Skilling. So has Verity. And it has never …"
"Sweet Eda's mercy!" Kettle exclaimed. "Tell me you are lying, please!"
"Why should I lie about this? Elfbark revives a man's strength, though it may bring on melancholy spirits following use. Often I would carry elfbark tea up to Verity in his Skill-tower, to sustain him." My telling faltered. The dismay on Kettle's face was too sincere. "What?" I asked softly.
"Elfbark is well known among Skilled ones as a thing to avoid," she said quietly. I heard every word, for no one in the tent even seemed to be breathing. "It deadens a man to Skill, so that he can neither use the Skill himself, nor may others reach through its fog to Skill to him. It is said to stunt or destroy Skill talent in the young, and to impede its development in older Skill users." She looked at me with pity in her eyes. "You must have been strongly talented, once, to retain even a semblance of Skilling."
"It cannot be …" I said faintly.
"Think," she bade me. "Did ever you feel your Skillstrength wax strong after using it?"
"What of my lord Verity?" Kettricken suddenly demanded.
Kettle shrugged reluctantly. She turned to me. "When did he start using it?"
It was hard for me to focus my mind on her words. So many things were suddenly in a different light. Elfbark had always cleared my head of the pounding that heavy Skilling brought on. But I had never tried to Skill immediately after I had used elfbark. Verity had, I knew that. But how successfully, I did not know. My erratic talent for Skilling… could that have been my elfbark use? Like a lightning bolt was the immense knowledge that Chade had made a mistake in giving it to Verity and me. Chade had made a mistake. It had never occurred to me, somehow, that Chade could be wrong or mistaken. Chade was my master, Chade read and studied and knew all the old lore. But he had never been taught to Skill. A bastard like myself, he had never been taught to Skill.
"FitzChivalry!" Kettricken's command jerked me back to myself.
"Uh, so far as I know, Verity began to use it in the early years of the war. When he was the only Skill user to stand between us and the Red-Ships. I believe he had never used the Skill so intensely as then, nor been as exhausted by it. So Chade began to give him elfbark. To keep up his strength."
Kettle blinked a few times. "Unused, the Skill does not develop," she said, almost to herself. "Used, it grows, and begins to assert itself, and one learns, almost instinctively, the many uses to which it may be put." I found myself nodding faintly to her soft, words. Her old eyes came up suddenly to meet mine. She spoke without reservation. "You are most likely stunted, both of you. By the elfbark. Verity, as a man grown, may have recovered. He may have seen his Skill grow in the time he has spent away from the herb. As you seem to have. Certainly he seems to have mastered the road alone." She sighed. "But I suspect those others have not used it, and their talents and usage of Skill had grown and outstripped what yours is. So now you have a choice, FitzChivalry, and only you can make it. The Fool has nothing to lose by using the drug. He cannot Skill, and by using it, he may keep the coterie from finding him again. But you … I can give you this, and it will deaden you to the Skill. It will be harder for them to reach you, and much harder for you to reach out. You might be safer that way. But you will be once more thwarting your talent. Enough elfbark may kill it off completely. And only you can choose."
I looked down at my hands. Then I looked up at the Fool. Once more, our eyes met. Hesitantly, I groped toward him with my Skill. I felt nothing. Perhaps it was only my own erratic talent cheating me again. But it seemed likely to me that Kettle had been right; the elfbark the Fool had just drunk had deadened him to me.
As Kettle spoke, she had been taking the kettle from the fire. The Fool held his cup out to her wordlessly. She gave him a pinch more of the bitter bark and filled it again with water. Then she looked at me, quietly waiting. I looked at the faces watching me, but found no help there. I picked up a mug from the stacked crockery. I saw Kettle's old face darken and her lips tightened, but she said nothing to me. She simply reached into the pouch of elfbark, working her fingers to get to the bottom where the bark had crushed itself into powder. I looked into the empty mug, waiting. I glanced back up at Kettle. "You said the Skillblast might have destroyed them?"
Kettle shook her head slowly. "It is not a thing to count on."
There was nothing I could count on. Nothing that was certain.
Then I set the mug down and crawled over to my blankets. I was suddenly tremendously weary. And frightened. I knew Will was out there somewhere, seeking me. I could hide myself in elfbark, but it might not be enough to stave him off. It might only weaken my already stunted defenses against him. Abruptly I knew I would sleep not at all that night. "I'll take the watch," I offered and stood again.
"He should not stand alone," Kettle said grumpily.
"His wolf watches with him," Kettricken told her confidently. "He can aid Fitz against this false coterie as no one else can."
I wondered how she knew that, but dared not ask her. Instead I took up my cloak and went to stand outside by the dwindling fire, watching and waiting like a condemned man.